16 June 2025
Review: Momentum Leaders’ UNTOLD
Under the glow of red light, the nine artists of the Momentum Leaders program slowly made their way on-stage. Only the drone of double bass broke the bated-breath silence, gradually joined by a chorus of muted humming.
In the intimate space of NIDA’s Studio Theatre, the effect was spellbinding – sound suspended in trance. From there, an eruption of activity: the choppy groove of violin kick-starting a hive of activity.
This was UNTOLD, an entirely youth-driven production: written, directed and performed by a selection of Australian Youth Orchestra musicians and alumni, as well as two alumni of the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA). While the mentorship of a number of Australia’s leading arts innovators aided the participants in honing their craft, the final work was resoundingly personal – a montage of five monologues, presented in seamless continuation. The premise was effective in its simplicity: a curated set of stories ‘untold’ – personal secrets, voices for the voiceless, and narratives once lost to time.
Across 45 minutes, movement, music and motion became in themselves fragmentary storytellers. A chalk circle was carved around the harp, the centrepiece of the stage, and then smudged by footprints, tracing a little symbolic path out of the limelight and off the stage.
The rhythmic activity painted a pulsing, florescent city – A Day in the Rain, orated by Lily Thomson, who recalls watching a homeless woman painting on a Melbourne street, the rain washing her work away. This was nestled beside Abigail Lui’s recitation of Loneliness, a poem by nursing home resident Meg Chandler, a reflection on isolation and a timely glimpse into the often-paradoxical nature of such a connected, electrically optimistic cityscape.
As the energy continued to dissipate, the touching rumination Wiegala began, a lullaby sung by Ilse Weber in the concentration camps of WWII. Arranged and performed by harpist-composer Paul Nicolaou, he was joined for this trio by flautist Jessica Scott and violinist Elliott Plumpton, who began this lament poised in the lamplight of the harp. This already soul-baring work was played with concentrated, quiet reflection.
The harp, fixed in place, then became the crux of a banyan tree, as Jessica Scott, accompanied by Abigail Lui on violin, moved to sit by its shadow. The rattle of leaves and whistles of birdsong transformed the set into a forested space, cut by deep percussive rumbles of thunder.
While emotionally laden, the contained duration of the performance, and the variation in staging kept the mood light. Kit Millais, trombone, provided a moment of well-timed comedic relief, buzzing on his trombone and zipping around the stage like an inescapable insect. It set the scene for a monologue equally as vulnerable as it was uncanny – director Sudip Sauden’s recitation of his partner’s birthday request for a Swiss army knife. Violent drum hits, which spooked the audience, both broke the tension and reinforced the seriousness of narrative, darkly humorous and undercut with an intimate sadness.
Breaking into an aggressive assault of instrumental sound, the pent-up tension explodes with might. This chaos bursts into a subdued, metallic soundscape, as the work finds itself back where it began, embellished with the twinkle of harp, and artful percussion improvisations from Jet Kye Chong – a space irrevocably changed, but still, again.
Reviewed by Paige Gullifer.